Institut National de Recherche et de Documentation Pedagogiques, Paris (France).

This research report is concerned with establishing a minimum vocabulary of English instruction for French students at the secondary level. The approach to the investigation is based on choosing vocabulary that corresponds to the current communication needs of the students, has functional content, and takes the spoken language into account. The need for limiting the volume of the vocabulary is stressed. Two basic criteria are defined for word selection. The criterion of function and distribution considers such things as word frequency, number and kinds of contexts a word appears in, grammatical function, cultural content, and the vocabulary needed for the language learning situation. The criterion of facility in language learning considers French cognates a word may have, and a word's regularity, simplicity and semantic precision. Four methods of choosing and classifying vocabulary items are described and compared. The first appendix lists the scientific works consulted, while the second appendix provides a sample index card used in the study. The third appendix lists the English function words to be included in the vocabulary. (CLK)